USA - Australian psychedelic band Tame Impala’s busy year reached its zenith at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California. Headlining on the Saturday night, at the festival, the big occasion gave lighting designer Rob Sinclair and his technical team full rein to unleash over 300 fixtures from GLP, supplied by Christie Lites. The LD had been brought into the Tame Impala family back in 2017 by creative director, Willo Perron. “The band wanted a super precise show,” he remembers, describing the set today as “a modern take on 60’s psychedelia, which hopefully really messes with people’s heads”. Among the GLP fixtures were 250 impression X4 Bars (in a mix of Bar 10s and longer Bar 20 battens) - a deployment that enhanced the psychedelic mood. “The design was an adaptation of the touring rig, but with some iconic statement pieces purpose designed for Coachella,” he explains. “It’s all about gradients, swirling colours and complex intensity chases. We needed to be able to make these gradients with everything available so the colour depth was important. The locking together of the X Bars was also essential, and I don’t think we could have used anything else.” The X4 Bar 20s were positioned on the floor and in towers and the Bar 10’s are situated inside the ring, in order to make the segments of the overhead ring smaller. Rob Sinclair’s production design also included 60 JDC1 hybrid strobes - for a specific reason. “We needed a huge bank of colour behind the band and the JDC1 gave us that, within budget. We tried pixel mapping but ultimately got better effects from programming them as lights. I really love both the X4 Bars and JDC1, and we’ve used them on a lot of shows.” The production easily reverted back to its touring mode once Coachella was behind them. “The show exists as a series of elements which can be added and taken away. Therefore, it can function with or without the ring, the screen can grow and we can add and subtract lasers. The programming is done in such a way that the show always makes sense.” At the operational end, his sentiments were supported by touring LD Jon Derrington, who was working off two Hog 4 consoles, with two Playback Wings. (Jim Evans)